Title:
Issues in the Design of Distributed Shared Memory Systems
Issues in the Design of Distributed Shared Memory Systems
Authors
Mohindra, Ajay
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Abstract
This thesis examines the various system issues that arise in the design of
distributed share memory (DSM) systems. This work has been motivated by the
observation that distributed systems will continue to become popular, and will
be increasingly used for solving large computational problems. To this
effect, shared memory paradigm is attractive for programming large distributed
systems because it offers a natural transition for a programmer from the world
of uniprocessors. The goal of this work is to identify a set of system
issues, such as integration of DSM with virtual memory management, choice of
memory model, choice of coherence protocol, and technology factors; and
evaluate the effects of the design alternatives on the performance of DSM
systems. The specific question that we are trying to answer is, " Can we
determine a set of system design parameters that defines an efficient
realization of a distributed shared memory system?". The design alternatives
have been evaluated in three steps. First, we do a detailed performance study
of a distributed shared memory implementation on the CLOUDS distributed
operating system. Second, we implement and analyze the performance of several
applications on a distributed shared memory system. Third, the system issues
that could not be evaluated via the experimental study, are evaluated using a
simulation-based approach. The simulation model is developed from our
experience with the CLOUDS distributed system. A new workload mode that
captures the salient features of parallel and distributed programs is
developed and used to drive the stimulator. The key results of the thesis
are: DSM mechanisms have to be integrated with the virtual memory management
for providing high performance distributed shared memory systems; the choice
of the memory model and coherence protocol does not significantly influence
the system performance for applications exhibiting high computation
granularity and low state-sharing; and an efficient implementation of DSM
requires a careful design of miscellaneous system services (such as
synchronization and data servers). The thesis also enumerates several
questions related to future research directions.
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Date Issued
1993
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1038822 bytes
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Text
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Technical Report